


Five Times Clint Didn't Know They Were Cuddling (And One Time He Did)

by fennecfawkes



Series: Handsy Octopus 'Verse [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, A Literal Igloo, Accidental Cuddling, Eventual Romance, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Transatlantic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 20:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fennecfawkes/pseuds/fennecfawkes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prequel to Clint Barton In Review, in which our hero can't seem to unfasten an unconscious agent's arms from around him, and is distressed to find he doesn't mind such entrapment. Mostly pre-slash with some good old fashioned Phlint at the end. Do not own them, never will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Clint Didn't Know They Were Cuddling (And One Time He Did)

**MOSCOW**  
This, Phil thinks, is ill advised.  
  
It’s not his first mission with Barton, and it certainly won’t be the last; stealth and fearlessness have been top criterion for the assignments SHIELD has thrown at him lately, and there are few besides Barton he trusts to fulfill both. This, the takedown of a deadly weapons trade in Moscow, was all but a solo mission on Barton’s part; Phil simply had to point the way toward the bad guys, with whom Barton had dealt swiftly and mercilessly. It had been an unqualified success, and now he and Barton are at the safe house, where they’ve been told to stay for the night before a SHIELD jet is scheduled to fly in the next day. Barton’s getting some well-deserved rest, and Phil... Well, at the moment, Phil is stuck.  
  
It’s not the worst kind of stuck, he thinks to himself as he halfheartedly attempts to pull out of Barton’s grasp. But Barton’s not just cuddly in his sleep—he’s _relentlessly_ cuddly when he’s not conscious. Barton’s arm is stretched across Phil’s chest and he’s gripping Phil’s wrist, one leg wrapped around both of Phil’s. When Barton first fell asleep, Phil had done his best to escape the cuddling, but try as he might, Barton wasn’t relinquishing his hold. Now, he’s trying to make the best of it, which is why he sighs and buries his face in the crook of Clint’s—no, no, Barton’s neck before drifting off into dreams that should be more sanitized, because he’s just an asset, for God’s sake, _just an asset_.

 **BUDAPEST**  
“Not again,” Phil moans to himself. He’d thought getting in bed after Barton might help his cause, that cause being never getting irrepressibly cuddled by his inconveniently attractive asset. But no, as soon as Phil’s beside him, a still-sleeping Barton rolls halfway on top of him, tangling together their legs and sighing softly.  
  
“At least you can relax,” Phil whispers, looking over at the blissfully unaware Barton. They’d been undercover for days, attempting to infiltrate a drug ring that supplied Budapest’s elite with imported coke from Colombia. Romanov and May were performing beautifully, as was Clint—Barton—and Phil was out of the field, at the nearby safe house, offering direction and occasional input. It wasn’t easy on any of them, and thankfully, it should be tied up within a few days. In the meantime, Phil assumes May and Romanov are happily asleep, and he knows for a fact that Barton is, since Barton’s passed out, not quite blocking Phil’s airway but somewhere near there.  
  
“Barton?” Phil says. He’s not whispering, but his tone is hushed. “Can you, you know, move?” He hesitates. “Clint?”  
  
Clint—yes, fine, that’s his name, whatever, it doesn’t mean anything if Phil doesn’t want it to—groans in his sleep. His eyes flutter open, but only long enough for Phil to note they’re still so damn gorgeous it nearly hurts, and he’s out again.  
  
Phil sighs and settles in and tries to ignore the tightness in his chest that grows ever tighter when Clint’s hand finds his wrist. 

**ANCHORAGE**  
“It’s an actual igloo,” Clint had pointed out earlier. “It’s not a safe house. It is literally an igloo. I swear, the Alaska outpost is fucking with us, sir.”  
  
“Be that as it may, the bed looks comfortable enough. Maybe this time it’s even big enough for two.”  
  
Clint smirked. “Budapest’s wasn’t to your liking, sir?”  
  
“Budapest was adequate,” said Phil. “No showering tonight, I suppose.”  
  
“Which is too bad,” Clint said. “Because I’m pretty sure I still smell like ... what did you call that stuff?”  
  
“I made up a name for my report,” Phil said mildly. “It was slime. HYDRA’s getting more creative with their resources. How’s your shoulder, by the way?”  
  
“Still dislocated,” said Clint, sounding cheerful. “Nothing medical won’t fix within an hour. Then they’ll probably hold me for a week, but that’s the breaks.”  
  
“Literally and figuratively.” Phil nodded and made what he hoped didn’t look like a mad dash for the bed, stripping off his pants beneath the sheets, removing his jacket, and unbuttoning his shirt till he was down to boxers and a plain white V-neck. Clint looked at him oddly—almost fascinated, really—and Phil tried to shake off how that made him feel as Clint slid in beside him, battered Tom Clancy novel in hand.  
  
“Hope you don’t mind if I read for a while,” Clint said, clicking on his flashlight.  
  
“Not at all,” said Phil. “Goodnight, agent.”  
  
“Goodnight, sir.”  
  
This had been Phil’s plan: fall asleep before Clint, as far away from him as possible while still remaining on the bed. Naturally, this plan is thwarted the moment Phil falls asleep, but he doesn’t realize it till he wakes up as sun glints through the least substantial of cracks in the igloo. It’s not quite a death grip Clint has him in—in fact, Phil could move out from under this one, since it’s just a leg pushed against his and an arm across his waist—but Phil lets it happen, since Clint’s certainly not conscious and there are far less comfortable positions he could find himself in on a clear Alaska morning. He does extricate himself eventually, careful not to disturb Clint as he moves out from underneath the man’s arm, then tells himself minutes later that he doesn’t miss the heat of a muscular calf against his.

 **MONTREAL**  
“Barton.”  
  
Clint doesn’t move, and Phil sighs, because this is long past ridiculous, and he can’t move his legs or either of his arms because literally all of Clint’s appendages are wrapped around his, so tightly that it’s hard to even shift it one direction or the other.  
  
“Barton,” Phil repeats, louder this time. “Clint. Agent. I need to use the bathroom.”  
  
Phil tentatively reaches up one hand and tugs at Clint’s right arm. Clint whimpers in his sleep, which is in no way adorable, and strengthens his hold. Phil swears under his breath and decides simply lying still is his best bet. He wonders how hard Romanov, who got her own bed this time around, would laugh if she saw what was happening in the adjacent room. He debates whether Fury somehow knows this happens and purposely assigns Clint and Phil overnight missions. And he thinks about what Clint would do if he knew, and whether or not Clint would be able to determine that it wasn’t something Phil actually minded, not at all.  
  
“Someday,” says Phil, “we are going to talk about this. We’re going to be adults about it, and you’ll probably have come out of the ceiling moments before. And we’re going to discuss our relationship, because that definitely wasn’t a friendly hug you gave me after I didn’t get shot today, against all odds, and you’ve been all too eager to change in front of each other lately, and damn it, Barton, I really do have to piss.”  
  
Clint sighs in his sleep, sounding happy, sounding satisfied, and Phil groans and closes his eyes.

 **HAVANA**  
“For God’s sake, Barton, we’re in Cuba,” Phil says, not bothering to lower his voice. “You don’t cuddle when it’s this hot.”  
  
But sleeping Clint is not having any of Phil’s logic as he spoons up against Phil’s back and loops his arms around Phil like Phil’s a human-sized teddy bear.  
  
“You could’ve come up with this position sooner, you know,” Phil grumbles, leaning back into Clint’s unconscious embrace. “Much more comfortable than the near-asphyxiation of you covering my body with yours in Budapest. I think I could get used to this one. I think this position, if used correctly, could convince me to tell you how I feel.” He chuckles to himself, since no one is listening, except maybe that weird stray cat in the corner of the room that wouldn’t stop following them around all day. “I might as well tell you anyway. I’m into you, Clint Barton. I’m into you the way a teenage girl gets into her first boyfriend. I write your name on the top of reports sometimes without meaning to. I keep copies of the transcripts from our debriefings and use a highlighter over what struck me as most exciting about individual missions. I keep flavored coffee in my office for you. Hell, I haven’t even had maintenance patch up the vent that gives you direct access to the floor in front of my desk.” Phil sighs heavily. “I’m completely gone for you, Barton. And it kills me, you not knowing it.”  
  
Just for a moment, Phil wants to turn around and kiss Clint awake, to move his lips along Clint’s face and neck and chest and show Clint exactly how he feels, how he’s felt since sometime between Moscow and Budapest. And he assumes that in time, Clint’s going to find out how he feels, and then he’ll find out how Clint feels, too, for better or worse. For now, he’ll just lean back and hold Clint’s hands in his, because at least for tonight, Clint doesn’t know, and he doesn’t have to.

 **MANHATTAN**  
“Did you ever like it, by the way?”  
  
“Hm?” Clint’s chest is pressed against Phil’s back, skin on skin, just warm enough without being too warm. It’s Phil’s favorite sleeping position, and Clint appreciates that fact. It’s Saturday, one of the rare Saturdays the two of them have taken off together, and it’s past noon, and Phil has no plans to move from their current position.  
  
“Way back before we were together, when I’d cuddle you in your sleep in safe house beds.”  
  
“I never told you? I was on board with it from the start.”  
  
“Really?” Phil can imagine Clint’s expression, the brightness of amusement in his eyes. “No grumbling or unsexy moaning or anything?”  
  
“You know all my moans are sexy, Clint,” says Phil, and Clint snorts. “And of course there was grumbling. I offered more commentary over time, once I determined that when you’re out, you’re very, very out.”  
  
“So, from the start.” Clint drums his fingers along Phil’s abdomen. Phil smiles and leans back into him. “Define ‘on board with it.’”  
  
“You know that place where your collarbone and your neck meet?”  
  
“Ah, the place you like kissing, right?”  
  
“It’s not the only place, but, yes, it’s a favored location.”  
  
“I know the place.”  
  
“Well,” says Phil. “The very first time, when we were in Moscow and we were just getting our well-deserved rest after the mission—well, you deserved it a little more than I did that time—you kind of draped your arm and leg over me, and you were doing this thing where you held my wrist like you’d lose it forever if you let go. And it was ... it was interesting, like you felt safe with me, you needed me to feel safe, or something like that.”  
  
“I still do.”  
  
Phil turns over and brushes his lips against Clint’s. “I know. I need you, too. Just don’t tell Fury.”  
  
“I won’t tell him if you’ll avoid mentioning his name when we’re in my bed,” says Clint with a shudder.  
  
“Fair. Anyway, I just looked over at you in the dark, and I looked at the crook of your neck and I put my face in it and that’s how I woke up in the morning.” Phil says it in a rush, because even now, it’s vaguely embarrassing.  
  
“Didn’t you once call me an unrepentant sap?” Clint asks, smiling crookedly, one of the many Clint Barton signature expressions of which Phil will never tire.  
  
“I did. And I stand by my statement.”  
  
“Well, pot, meet kettle, how’s it going?”  
  
“That’s not really the exact phrasing, Barton.”  
  
Clint kisses him. “If I got things right all the time, if I was perfect, you wouldn’t want me. Things wouldn’t be as interesting.”  
  
“I suppose that’s true.” Phil pauses. “You’re my kind of perfect, Clint.”  
  
“You always know the right thing to say to make me want to do all kinds of dirty things to you,” Clint says, grinning widely as he leans in again.

**Author's Note:**

> Aw, cute, I've never written a 5+1 before!


End file.
